Working Comic: Back to Work. – by Shawn Carter.

If last week was a week of leisure this was the wake up call. Back to work. I had a show every night and one morning I even got up early and went to meet up with an old friend about doing some part time work. AND I visited my old workplace. So let’s talk about the week.

Monday: I hosted Sally O’Briens and we had 25 comics instead of 50 and I was way less stressed than I normally am at 9:35 on a Monday night. It was great.

Tuesday: We had our weekly comedy show at Stadium in Quincy. The 8pm stand up show went great. Plenty of audience, really funny comedians, it was a really terrific night. At 10pm we had our debate show and it was great as always and the prize (pair of tickets to see Marc Maron, generously donated by Anthony Costa) was won by the hilarious Bill McMorrow.

Wednesday: Snuck in a set at the Tavern at the End of the World open mic in Charlestown.

Thursday: I was part of a (mostly) ladies comedy show called “Broad Appeal”. The show is hosted by Christa Weiss and it was a ton of fun. If you’re a man that likes being surrounded by broads and doesn’t usually use the word “broads” I would recommend it.

Friday: I had a grand ole time performing at Dick Doherty’s Comedy Escape in Worcester, MA. I was hired to feature on the show, so I was able to do 25 minutes in front of a really fun audience. At one point during my last joke I meant to say “So there I am, a straight man, in the middle of a gay club” but I accidentally said “So there I am, a gay……” uhhh… The crowd laughed it up of course and then some guy yelled “Freudian”. Now, when I agreed to do a show in Worcester I thought there might be a chance that someone might heckle me. I thought it might even be possible that they accuse me of not being a heterosexual. I thought it might even be possible that they use a word that begins with the letter “F” when they heckle me. But I did not think all those things would happen and the word would be “Freudian”. The crowd was truly awesome though and after I finished my set the headliner, Greg Howell, went up and killed it.

Saturday: I was honored to be invited by Jon Rineman to perform for his high school alumni benefit show. It seems as though it’s no problem for a man that’s a writer for the Tonight Show to sell out a show while returning home. We had 300 people at that show easily and they were all excited to see Jon. Everyone seemed really excited for the comedy and they were even treating myself and the other comics as if we had taken time out of our super busy successful careers to do this show. Truthfully it was one of the best gigs I’ve ever had. I was hosting and did 20 minutes cold and the crowd was amazing right from the get go. Then I brought up Phoebe Angle and Will Smalley in that order and each took their turn cracking the audience up. Then we took a ten minute intermission after which I was to get back on stage and do another 5 minutes of comedy to get the crowd re-warmed up. This was the part of the show I was most nervous about, sometimes after an intermission it can be hard to get the audience back into the show. But they were ready. I know they were all waiting to see Rineman but they were more than happy to sit and laugh at my jokes for the next 5 minutes until I introduced him. After the 5 minutes I introduced Jon and the audience gave him a great big applause and he just slayed for the next hour. After the show there was no shortage of audience that wanted to stick around for a few minutes and talk to the comedians especially Jon.

That sort of night is how I always thought comedy shows went before I started doing comedy. It turns out to be more of the exception but I’m glad I got the opportunity to enjoy it this week. Who knows what next week brings.